


Notice the Whole Picture.

by Kali Cephirot (10AlliraDream84)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Card Captor Sakura
Genre: Crossover, Friendship, Gen, Wise Old Monkeys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-26
Updated: 2010-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-13 09:35:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/135823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/10AlliraDream84/pseuds/Kali%20Cephirot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fact that it's impolite doesn't stop Iroh from wondering from where does Clow come from.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Notice the Whole Picture.

  
**Notice The Whole Picture.**   


If you want to have a a good game of Pai Sho, there is no nationality. It is an unstated rule for the game that the people who play a game will leave any and all history between and against them behind them, at least for the duration of the game. You may be dealing with someone who tricked you, someone who hurt you, sometimes a sworn enemy and still, while the game lasts, you are to leave that hate behind.

If you don't, your game will show it, and most likely your game will suffer. Pai Sho is a strategy game and, as thus, it has no place for that kind of weakness. Hate blinds you and stops you from looking to the whole picture, makes you focus on just one tiny piece, which is why it's impolite to ask the people you're playing with (never _against_ ) what is their nationality. Few people are gracious enough to forget that kind of things.

Of course, the fact that it's impolite has never stopped Iroh from wondering in silence, picturing what kind of life the people he plays with may have lived. Although, at the moment, his silence is really, really loud while wondering.

"More tea?" The man in front of him asks. His black hair would render him to either a member of the Earth Kingdom or the Fire Nation, but his eyes are as blue as any member of the Water Tribe Iroh has ever found.

His name, 'Clow', doesn't follow the phonetics nor the name-structure that belongs to any of the Four Nations.

"If you'd please," Iroh answers with a smile of his own, placing a wheel above the moon that Clow played, a very bold move that had surprised him. He can't find no fault in Clow's jasmine tea, and that speaks more highly of him than if he could find about his nationality. "If I can say, it's a very delicious tea."

"You're very kind," Clow smiles, pushing his glasses up his nose with a soft gesture. "But I can't take much credit for it. It's been in the family since my great-grandfather."

Iroh hides his smile as he sips from the tea. Clow had as much let him now that he wasn't going to tell him what mix was his tea at the same time he places an eagle-lion, the piece for secret.

He counters the attack with the river, the way life sings and makes everything bloom. His new friend laughs warmly, eyes merry behind his glasses.

Clow's clothes, too, set him apart. Too extravagant for royalty, they display the moon and the sun interwined and the way he moves and talks speak of balance, something that Iroh thinks, the world needs desperately so, something that - and he offers his ancestors and Lu Ten a thought of apology - makes him hope that it is true that the Avatar isn't dead.

But he doesn't think that Clow is the Avatar. He is too young, for one, and although Iroh has never had the chance to speak with an Air Nomad - regretfully - there is just something in Clow that sets him apart from what Iroh has read about them, just like he can probably make a list of why Clow isn't from any of the other Nations.

A mystery, indeed.

"I apologize for my rudeness," he tells Clow, watching as he places a bow next to where Iroh had placed an arrow, making him wonder just how much Clow has noticed about him. "But I must confess I'm curious. Would it be too much of me to wonder what do you do for a living, my friend?"

Clow bows his head, eyes the color of a sky when the moon is full.

"A friend could never be rude when wondering that," Clow smiles, picking up his cup and drinking a bit before he puts it down again. "I'm... traveling at the moment. Researching."

"So you're a scholar?" And it doesn't sound weird, except that Iroh thinks there has to be more to that. His next piece, the sun, is put directly against Clow's upper quadrant, though the fact that three pieces down there he placed a cloud softens the blow.

"It could be said that I am," Clow admits. He barely pauses a moment before he puts a crescent moon next to the sun, and then Iroh doesn't have to stop himself from placing, three places left where he put the cloud, a mountain. "I'm researching Bending in general. And Benders, of course."

The unstated rules of Pai Sho have it that he can't ask if Clow is a Bender; if asked, Clow would be completely within his rights to stand up and leave. Iroh pauses a moment while he looks at the game, trying to understand whatever it is that Clow is telling.

Elements, spirits, war... the lotus piece that Clow had played at the beginning surrounded by the moon, sun, cloud, river and mountain...

"I am not a Bender, if you're wondering." Clow admits in a soft voice, pouring both of them some more sweet, fragrant tea. Iroh looks at him and whatever secret Clow is hinting at is still hidden within the depths of his eyes. "But it has been a very enlightening experience."

The secret, Iroh knows, it's at the tip of his tongue, and he knows that he shouldn't focus on that but on the general picture but it feels just to close to leave it like that. He too has the same stubborn strike that runs through Zuko's veins, after all.

A hand touches his shoulder and one of his soldiers passes him a note, lets him know that the reparations to their ship are complete and that prince Zuko wants them to leave before the sun sets that afternoon. Which means that he has to interrupt his game.

Iroh keeps from sighing, instead placing a blank piece on top of Clow's last placed piece, forfeiting the game. Clow seems honestly sorry about that, even as he stands up too.

"I wish for us to meet again," Clow says, bowing waist deep.

Iroh bows just as deep. "So do I, my friend."

Perhaps after they return from the North Pole, there might be a chance for that.


End file.
